//------------------------------//
// Crystallon 
// Story: The Child of Sun and Moon 
// by Darkest Night 
//------------------------------//

He knew.
Even before he opened his eyes, he knew.
He rose back up from dreamless slumber without opening his eyes, and laid there without moving for a long moment to try to come to terms with what had happened.  He had lost his wing.  He remembered seeing it spin away from him just before he passed out.  And there was no way they’d recovered it in time, sunrise was just seconds away.  Most likely, he changed while still falling to the ground, and either Summer Dawn saved him or he somehow saved himself and didn’t remember it.
He would never fly again.  When sunset came, he would transform into a thestral with only one wing, he would forever be crippled in his preferred form, he would never feel the wind in his mane or enjoy the panoramic view of the land far below him again.  For him, the nights would no longer hold the wonder and joy they once had, he would pass them on the ground, and most likely inside, away from the sky, away from the stars.  He wouldn’t want to look up at them and know that he could never get close to them again.
It would hurt too much to be constantly reminded of what he had lost.
His mother didn’t raise a quitter, however, or a whiner.  He had a job to do, and a very important one at that.  He was out here doing nothing less than saving both the Nightlands and Equestria from the ravages of the mad unicorn, Sombra, a master of dark magic.  He didn’t have the time or the luxury to mourn, or lament, he’d have time to come to terms with his loss when all this was over.  Until then, he had to keep his mind on the goal, which meant moving forward one step at a time.  And the next step would obviously be dealing with the throbbing pain across his upper back.  The injury that took his wing had cut much deeper, through his armor, and he could feel it very close to the base of his neck, across his shoulders.
From the feel of it, they were on the move.  He could feel himself rocking and swaying, telling him he was shrunk down and inside the saddle bag.  He was laying on something soft, and had something warm over him, and he could feel a constriction around his throbbing shoulders.  They’d bandaged him, telling him that the others were alright.  Moonshade had to be flying them, and he knew that Summer Dawn was close to him.  He could smell her.  He was laying on his side, his head propped on a pillow, and then he felt Summer Dawn’s hoof gently brush at his mane.  He slowly opened his eyes, which elicited a gasp from her, and she leaned down and kissed him very carefully on the cheek.  “Oh Star, you’re awake,” she said in a charged emotional tone.  “I was so worried!”
“I feel it, across my back.  Did you use the healing tonic?”
“There was only one vial left,” she told him quickly.  “It was all I could find, the bag was slashed, most of our supplies fell out.  Star,” she said, then she broke into tears.  “Oh, Star, I don’t know how to tell you this—”
“I know,” he said woodenly, without emotion.  “I know, Summer.  Right before I blacked out, I saw my—I know what happened.”
“I tried to get it back,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “But the thestrals had us surrounded, and I had to teleport us away before I lost my magic again, and then the sun rose—“
“I know.  It’s not your fault,” he told her in a gentle voice.  “I’m sure you did everything you could, and thank you for trying.  Don’t blame yourself.”
“Oh Star, I’m so sorry!  I know how much you—I just wish—I can’t—”
“Shhh,” he breathed, reaching up a hoof and putting it on her shoulder.  “Are we in Unicornia yet?”
“I don’t know.  We’ve been flying for half the night,” she answered, sniffling a bit.  “It’s just after sunrise now, you just changed a little bit ago, and Moonshade said that we should reach Crystallon by late morning.  She said we may find a healer there, because we’re going to need help.  When the moon comes up, Star—”
“I know.  My amputated wing is going to bleed me out,” he said grimly.  “If we can’t find a healer, we’re going to have to cauterize the wound, Summer.  Moonshade probably knows how to do it, she knows basic battlefield first aid, but she’ll need your help with the fire to heat the iron she’ll have to use to do the deed.  You remember the fire spell I taught you?”
She nodded, wiping at another tear in her eye with her hoof.  “I’m so sorry, Star,” she said in a small voice.  “If I had shouted a moment sooner, you may have seen him coming.”
“Summer, don’t blame yourself,” he said in a stronger voice.  “I don’t.”
“I just feel so—I saw it happen, Star.  I saw them hurt you, and I felt so, so helpless, so angry.”
He held a hoof up to her, and when she reached out to him, he curled his hoof around hers and pulled her down to lay beside him.  He put his foreleg over her, and she almost instinctively cuddled up to him.  She was quiet a long time, just pressing her cheek and muzzle against his chest, her horn scraping against the side of his neck, and then she sighed and sniffled.  “Some help I am.  You’re the one that’s hurt, and here you are comforting me,” she said in a weak voice.
“Just because you weren’t injured, it doesn’t mean that you’re not hurt, Summer,” he told her gently.  “But I’m going to be alright.  We’ll deal with this as it comes, because we don’t really have much choice.  If I stop to think about—“ he broke off, then took a deep breath.  “Let’s just say that when this is over, when we’re back home, I’m going to need you like I’ve never needed another pony.  But right now, we don’t have time to do anything more than put a bandage on it and move on.”
“I’ll be there for you, Star.  I will always be there for you,” she said to him in a quiet, gentle, compassionate, but powerful voice, wrapping her foreleg around him and pulling herself against him tightly.
They passed the two hours as Moonshade flew them deeper and deeper into Unicornia quietly, mainly because the wound across his back and shoulders was painful enough to sap much of his energy.  Summer Dawn tended him carefully and attentively over those hours, checking the bandage over his shoulders several times, helping him eat and drink since putting any weight at all on his front legs caused him nearly blinding pain, and trying to make him as comfortable as possible.  Moonshade showed off her stamina by not stopping, not slowing down, until he felt them begin to descend.  Summer Dawn rushed over to the mesh window and gave a gasp.  “It’s Crystallon!  Star, it’s beautiful!” she gushed.  “There’s a crystal castle like in the Crystal Empire, but all the crystal spires are glowing with light!  The architecture is a lot like Canterlot, too!”
“I’ll see it soon enough,” he said from his bedroll.
They felt Moonshade land, which made him wince and hiss in pain, and heard her challenged almost immediately.  “Thestrals are not welcome at these gates!” they heard a harsh voice call out.
“I come bearing a message from Princess Celestia of Canterlot for the King,” Moonshade retorted.  “And I’m also carrying an injured pony that needs a healer.”
“You’re carrying a pony?  Where, in your saddlebag?” the voice asked sneeringly.
In answer to that, Summer Dawn used her magic to open the flap, which no doubt caused a reaction outside since it was limned over in the pink of her magic, and she levitated both of them out of the bag and set Starjumper down on the road.  The city was surrounded by a wall, and Moonshade had landed on a bridge leading to a huge pair of open gates through the wall, with the white marble buildings of the city visible behind them.  She ended the shrink spell all but standing over Starjumper’s prone form, then gave them a narrow-eyed glare.  “We need a healer, and we need one now!” she nearly shouted at them.  “He’s badly hurt!”
“And?” one of the two unicorn guards at the gate asked scornfully.  They were wearing resplendent bronze-colored armor with crested helmets, and both of them were very large unicorns, nearly the size of Starjumper.  “The follies of a Magestrian and a thestral are not our responsibility to correct.”
“We don’t have time to deal with the doorponies,” Starjumper said in a low, weak tone, rolling onto his hooves, then he slowly stood up, grimacing from the pain.  He managed to get to his full height, the knees on his forelegs trembling, and he gave them a baleful stare.  “We need to see the King and Queen immediately.”
The shorter of the two gasped.  “You’re a Lykan!” he blurted.
“Yes I am,” he replied bluntly.  “And if you don’t get us to the palace, you may find yourself in a war with the Nightlands by the end of the month.  Summer Dawn, show them the seal of Equestria on the letter.”
The two of them looked at him, then at Moonshade, then they looked at the rolled scroll Summer Dawn pulled from the bag with her magic, with the wax seal out so they could see it.
The two guards looked at the seal, then each other, then the taller of the two cleared his throat.  “What happened to you, Lykan?” he asked.
“Thestrals attacked us at the border with Maretonia,” he answered.  “They tried to stop us from getting here.  I suggest you tell your captain of the guard to triple his patrols and treat any thestrals you see except for her as hostile.”
The two guards looked at each other again, then they split apart, moving out of their way.  “This avenue goes directly to the palace, just stay on it,” he said.  “Present the letter to the guard at the gate.  He’ll take care of things from there.”
“What about a healer?  He can barely stand!” Summer Dawn demanded.
“They can arrange that at the palace,” the other guard said.  “If you can get him there, they can take care of him.”
Growling in her throat, Summer Dawn wrapped Starjumper in her magic and lifted him off the ground, then pulled up his unshrunk bedroll and more or less pushed it up under him until he laid down upon it.  “Let’s go, Moonshade, we don’t have much time,” she ordered, starting through the gates at a brisk canter.
They attracted a whole lot of attention as they moved up the wide avenue with the palace at its end in the distance, a huge building either made of glittering crystal or cladded with it, but not in the style of the Crystal Palace in the Empire.  It was more of an Equestrian style, a large palace with soaring towers that shimmered and glittered in the afternoon sun even as they glowed from within with magical light.  Unicorns stopped what they were doing and watched them pass with harsh looks at Moonshade and almost complete silence, and the open hostility directed at her made Moonshade both raise her head and puff out her chest a bit in defiant pride and walk much closer to Summer Dawn than normal.  The size of Crystallon made them walk for many minutes as the castle grew in their vision as they approached, until they reached the silvery fence surrounding it.  Four silver-armored guards almost rushed forward when Moonshade approached them, but Summer Dawn put herself between the thestral and the unicorns.  “We bear a message for the King and Queen of Unicornia from Princess Celestia of Equestria,” she called loudly, making them slow to a stop.  “But what’s more important, we need a healer immediately.  We were attacked by the Night Queen’s soldiers on the way here and they injured him.”
“She is a Nightlands soldier, Magestrian,” one of the guards pointed out, pointing at hoof at Moonshade.  “That armor?  She’s a Shadow Blade, one of the Night Queen’s royal guards!  Do you have any idea of how ridiculous your statement sounds?”
“I was a Shadow Blade,” Moonshade hissed in reply.  “Not anymore!”
“Show him the letter, Summer,” Starjumper said from his levitating bedroll.
She again presented the scroll to them, seal out so they could see it.  “The thestral is with us because what’s going on is in the Nightlands, and she was witness to it,” Starjumper explained.  “She’s the one that brought us the information we’re going to present to your King and Queen.  And the Night Queen tried to kill us to stop us from warning you.”
The four of them pulled back a little and talked among themselves, then one of them galloped into the palace a moment later.  Another moment later, a quite resplendent looking unicorn came out, a burly stallion with a white coat and black mane that was expertly styled.  He advanced up to them and through the gates, then looked at them with barely disguised contempt.  “If you have a message from Equestria, deliver it to me,” he said pompously.  “And be gone from our city.”
“But he needs a healer!” Summer Dawn protested, pointing a hoof at Starjumper.  “The thestrals injured him!”
“That’s not our concern,” he sniffed.
“And who are you to make that decision?” Summer Dawn demanded.
“I am Prince High Hoof,” he replied, almost sneeringly.  “Who are you to address me in such a low manner, you Magestrian peasant?”
“Our orders were to present this message to the King and Queen,” Starjumper said.  “We will not give the message to anyone but them.”
“Then you can take your message and go back to Equestria with it,” the effete stallion declared.
“Fine.  And when the Night King sends his thestral armies across the border and lays waste to your kingdom, you can tell your parents that you turned away the messengers that were sent to warn you about it,” Starjumper retorted.
“Ha!  That proves you are charlatans!  There is no Night King!”
“There will be,” Starjumper told him in as strong a voice as he could muster.  “And that is what we’re here to warn your parents about.  The Night Queen is about to lose her throne to a psychopathic maniac, and his first act will be to raze Unicornia to the ground.  But, if watching your kingdom burn and everypony in it get slaughtered is what you want, then we’ll be happy to leave you to it.”
“You’d better listen to him, Prince curly-mane,” Moonshade added.  “You have no idea what’s going on up in those mountains.  I do, and I’m trying to stop it.  That’s why I’m here.”
He was about to say something, but a circular burst of green magic heralded the arrival of another unicorn. This one was even taller than Starjumper, by a considerable margin, with long, powerful legs and a broad, imposing muzzle.  He was wearing a crown atop his short-cropped black mane, and his coat was a burnished gold with white socks on his hooves.  “Where is the Lykan?” he demanded, looking at them, then fixing his gaze on Starjumper.  “By the spire!  A living Lykan!” he blurted.  “What goes on here?  Who are you, Lykan, and why do you come to Unicornia?”
“We bear a message from Princess Celestia of Equestria for the King and Queen, over a very grave matter,” Starjumper answered, lowering his head as the guards and the annoying prince bowed to this new pony…which had to be the King. Summer Dawn and Moonshade did the same quickly.  “Your Highness,” he added.
“Did you come for the Night Stone?”
Starjumper gave him a bit of a surprised look.  “No,” he replied.  “Well, yes, at least temporarily.  I can explain everything inside, your Highness.”
“Bring them in, quickly!  Son, send for Mender for the Lykan!” he ordered.
“But Father, they—“
“He is a Lykan!” the King cut him off.  “Do you remember what I told you about the Lykans?”
“Thank you, your Highness!” Summer Dawn said with great relief and sincerity in her voice.
They were carried into the palace, into a very richly appointed parlor not far from the main doors that was decorated in pale woods, white silk, and golden accents.  Starjumper was moved from his bedroll to a couch as the Queen of Unicornia joined them, an equally tall, regal, quite beautiful mare with shimmering rose colored eyes, a pale tan coat, and a lustrous auburn mane that was so long it dragged the ground around her front hooves.  Her tail was just as long, dragging the ground behind her.  They read the message Celestia sent them quickly, then approached them as a unicorn wearing a red garment over his shoulders and back carefully removed the bandage over Starjumper’s shoulders.  “Is it true?  Is the Night Queen trying to resurrect Sombra?” the Queen asked in a gasp.
“We believe so, your Highness,” Summer Dawn answered.  “This is the Night Queen’s daughter, she brought us the information.  She doesn’t want to see Sombra take over her homeland.”
“He’ll enslave my kind and turn us into monsters,” Moonshade said vehemently.  “I can’t let that happen.  My mother has lost her mind, and she must be stopped.”
“And that’s why she sent a Lykan.  Celestia was always a clever one,” the King mused, looking at Starjumper.  “I can see her plan.  She wants you to take the Night Stone so Sombra can’t use it against the thestrals.”
“It’s the Night Stone they’re using to try to restore Sombra, your Highness,” Starjumper answered.  “If I can get to it and take it before they finish, we stop Sombra from returning.”
“A sound plan,” the Queen told them.  “One that the Night Queen must have foreseen if she sent soldiers after you.”
“She’s been trying to kill him for moons, your Highness,” Moonshade told her.  “She knows he’s the only pony that can stop her plan.”
“How does it look, Mender?” the King asked.
“A fairly deep wound, your Majesty,” the red-garbed pony answered.  “It looks to have been treated with a healing potion of some sort, but not one of sufficient potency to do little more than stop the bleeding.”
“We used a healing tonic, but we only had one left after the attack,” Summer Dawn said, hovering close to Starjumper.  “The thestrals tore the bag we had holding our supplies.  We lost almost everything.”
“What can you do for him, Mender?”
“I should be able to treat this wound, your Majesty, but it’s going to take at least a full day.”
“There’s more to it,” Starjumper said in a quiet, reluctant tone.  “I…lost a wing in the attack,” he said in a strained voice, which made Summer Dawn put a comforting hoof over his.  “When sunset comes, I’m going to bleed to death quickly if that injury isn’t treated.”
“So the legends are indeed true,” the healer pony mused.  “Unicorn by day, thestral by night.”
“They are,” the King said in a strong voice.  “What can you do for him in that regard, Mender?”
“I grieve to say there is nothing I can do to restore the wing, young stallion,” he said in a compassionate voice.  “My healing magic and the alchemical potions I can brew come nowhere near that kind of restorative power.  But I can seal the wound.  Let me go back to my office and get the potion I need to start treatment, by your leave, your Majesty.”
“Go quickly, Mender, he needs to be healed as quickly as possible,” the King told him.
He nodded, stepped away from the couch and bowed, then scurried quickly from the room.
“Now, Shadow Blade, I want you to tell me everything,” the King said, looking at Moonshade.  “What the Night Queen is planning, and how you intend to stop her.”
“Yes, your Highness.”  Starjumper listened as she laid out the framework of the Night Queen’s plan and Celestia’s answer, as the red-robed Mender returned and carefully treated his wound with a thick, sweet-smelling oil of some sort that soothed the pain as it was applied with a swab.  He very nearly fell asleep under that careful, tender ministration, as the exhaustion caused by a wound like that nearly overtook him.  Moonshade was not specific when it came to exactly how they were going to retrieve the Night Stone, only saying that she would get them into the Cathedral of Night using her knowledge of the citadel and reach the room holding it, where they would then steal it.  Moonshade was speaking as if she didn't trust the King, and in that respect, he couldn't blame her.  After all, the thestrals and the Theradale unicorns of Unicornia had hostile relations.
Besides, she was following his mother's advice:  trust no pony.
“I see,” the King said after Moonshade finished.  “There’s little we can do to help you since my soldiers could never hope to keep up with a thestral in the Nightlands, but what we can do is heal your Lykan companion and restore his strength for the task ahead, as well as resupply you.  I believe your plan has a good chance of success.  Again Celestia shows her cunning,” he said approvingly.  “Once you retrieve the Night Stone, you should return to Crystallon as quickly as you can.  We can deter the thestrals that will be after you and offer you a safe place to rest before returning to Equestria.”
“We’ll be in Maretonia ten minutes after recovering the Night Stone, your Highness.  We appreciate the offer, but we’ll be moving far too fast for the thestrals to keep up.”
“Ah, you have some kind of magical device to get you away?”
Starjumper didn’t answer immediately, as he looked at the king and sensed...something.  He wasn’t sure if it was his voice, or his eyes, or his demeanor, but the king suddenly didn’t seem quite so kind and amenable to him.  “I’ve been taught a spell that will get us away from the Nightlands, by Princess Celestia,” he answered carefully, sparing a slight glance at Summer Dawn, praying that she didn’t elaborate.  “I left behind a focus object in Maretonia, and when I cast the spell, we’ll be transported back to where it is.”
“I’m familiar with that spell.  You left it someplace hidden and protected, I hope?”
“In a cave not far from the border with Unicornia,” he answered.  “The Princess felt that with such a huge head start, we could beat the thestral warriors back to Equestria.”
“Celestia is a clever one, her plan will work,” the king said with a slightly eager smile.  “And I think that we’re interrupting your rest, my young friend.  The Queen and myself will leave you to Mender’s care and return to speak more of this later this afternoon, when we have time.”
“Of course, your Highness,” Starjumper said, glancing at Summer Dawn.  She had a slightly puzzled look on her face, but thank Celestia, she wasn’t saying anything.  Moonshade’s expression was stoic and all business, which was normal for her, but the look in her eyes was one of comprehension.  Summer Dawn kept her silence as the healer tended to him, and when he was finished, he took a step back.
“Right now, my young friend, sleep is the best thing for you,” he declared.  “The potions and remedies I use work best on a sleeping pony.  I’ll return just before sunset so we can seal the wound in your—seal that wound,” he said carefully, trying to sound neutral, “and then a night’s rest should get you well enough to travel.  The healing salves and potions I use can’t heal instantly, but they do heal fairly quickly.”
“Alright.  Thank you for your aid, Master Mender,” Starjumper told him with a nod.
“I’ll have a meal brought in for you, madam unicorn, madam thestral,” he told them.  “The couches should suffice for you if you need to rest.”
“Thank you very much, my Lord Mender, for everything,” Summer Dawn told him.
“It was my pleasure, madam,” he replied in a sincere, gentle voice.
The red-garbed unicorn left them, leaving them alone in the room, and Summer Dawn looked down at him.  “Star—“
He held up a hoof and shook his head, then lifted it as his horn glowed brilliantly with golden light.  A shimmering dome appeared around them, his dome of silence spell.  “We have to speak quickly before they realize the silence isn’t normal,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell the King the truth?”
“Remember what my mother said, just before we left, Summer?  Trust no pony.  And I don’t trust him,” he replied bluntly.  “Right, now, I’ll bet my tail that he’s ordering unicorns to search the caves across the border along a direct line from Marette, searching for the focus object.  If not for the fact that I’m too injured to continue, I’d be teleporting us all out of here right now,” he said darkly.
“I agree with Starjumper,” Moonshade said, looking towards the door.  “The King wants the Night Stone.”
“You think so?”
“His scent changed as he heard our plan,” she answered.  “I could smell his greed,” she added darkly.
“So, what do we do, Star?” Summer Dawn asked.
“We play along,” he answered.  “I’ll slow us down in this condition, so we’ll accept their aid and then leave the minute I can travel.  In the meantime, we stay in this room, and stay as close together as we can.  Summer, it will fall on you.”
“I can—“
“Say nothing,” he said.  “We trust you know what to do.  Just be ready.”
“I will.”
“One thing,” Moonshade said.  “If we get separated, we meet at Point One.  Remember where that is?”
“I do,” Starjumper nodded.
“I remember,” Summer Dawn added.
He gave the two mares a cautionary look, then he ended the spell, feeling a sudden exhaustion wash over him.  He then laid back and closed his eyes deliberately, and seconds later, he heard Summer Dawn move two of the other couches in the parlor closer to him, then heard them climb onto them to rest.
With the quiet and the pain and the exhaustion that came with his injuries, it took only moments for Starjumper to drift off to sleep.



It was well into midafternoon when he finally woke up, opening his eyes to see the sun drifting lower down a large, elegant arched window.  Years of practice told him with a single glance that sunset was about an hour away.  He heard the faint clanking of metal, warning him that they weren’t alone in the room, but he could admit that he felt much, much better.  The pain across his shoulders was just a dull ache now, telling him that Mender’s potions and spells had healed a significant amount of his injury, and that was a welcome relief.  But the fact that armored guards were in the room was a concern to him, spurring him to shake off the cotton in his head and raise his head off the couch and look back to where the other couches were, where Summer Dawn and Moonshade had been sleeping.
They were empty.
He rolled onto his belly and sat up as best he could on the couch, wincing in pain when he had to move his shoulders, and saw that two armored guards stood by the door in the room, and his friends were not there.  The two large, metal-clad unicorns gave him a steady, emotionless look, then one of them lifted a small gong from a hook on the shoulder of his armor and rung it using his magic.
He had the feeling that whoever answered that summons was not going to be very pleasant.
Moments later, the King himself entered the room.  The two armored guards bowed on their front legs to him as he entered, and the tall, raven-maned unicorn stopped not far from his guards, keeping a lot of distance between the two of them.  That was also not a good sign, not at all, and Starjumper opened his senses to check for any lingering spells in the room, something he could do without using magic himself.  Any accomplished magician could sense the presence of magic after working with it for so long.  He could sense a shield, an invisible planar shield separating him from the King.
That confirmed his worst suspicions.
“Your Highness,” Starjumper said evenly, bowing his head.  “Where are my companions?”
“The Queen is giving them a tour of the palace,” he replied smoothly.  “And that will give us a chance to further discuss your mission while they are being entertained.”
“There’s honestly nothing further to discuss,” Starjumper answered, struggling to a seated position.  “We’ve told you—“
“What you were told to do.  What I will tell you is what you will do,” he interrupted.  “The Night Stone was made by us.  It belongs to us, and you will return it to us, its rightful owners,” he said strongly.
“It won’t do you any good,” Starjumper protested.  “Without Lykans to—“
“But I have a Lykan, my friend,” he said in a darkly amused voice, giving him a malevolent smile.  “When you return it to us, you will return to your ancestral duty and use its power for the betterment of all unicorns.  You are a Lykan, Starjumper, you are connected to the Night Stone.  You can safely use it, and so you shall.”
“You overlook something, your Highness.  I am the one that decides when and how it will be used.  And I will not use it for somepony that forces me to do it.”
“I will not force you, Lykan,” he said in a confident voice.  “You will use it as I direct you of your own free will.”
“How can it be my free will if you’re the one dictating what I do with it?” Starjumper challenged.  “The Night Stone does belong to you, the descendents of those who made it, your Highness.  But it also belongs to the thestrals.  They had a hoof in its creation, an equal role, so they also have every right to it.  And to be honest about it, they need it more than you.  When the Night Queen is deposed and the threat of Sombra is neutralized, I’ll return the Night Stone to the Cathedral of Night and then I will leave.  Nopony will be using its power, neither the thestrals nor the Theradales.  I won’t allow it to be used as a tool of war, nor will I allow it to become a bargaining chip between you and the Nightlands.”
“A noble declaration, Lykan,” he said in a more hostile voice, yet was still speaking in a civil tone, “but you have no right to deny us what is ours by ancestral right.  We created the Night Stone.  It belongs to us.  The thestrals betrayed us and drove us away, denying us what is ours.  And we will not be denied the Night Stone, not when a Lykan has finally appeared to remove it from the treacherous thestrals!”
“The thestrals that betrayed you were the thestrals of over a thousand years ago,” Starjumper told him.  “The thestrals of today need the Night Stone.  Without it, they will lose the ability to fly and walk on walls, be trapped in their homes and villages high in the mountains, and they will certainly die.  Or does that matter to you?”
“It does not,” he sneered.  “After everything they have done to us, to the Lykans, to their neighbors, there is not a unicorn, pony, griffon, or hippogryph that would mourn the loss of the thestrals.  The magic of the Night Stone made them a scourge on the Eastern Kingdoms, and if they wither and perish without it, well, that is a punishment they brought upon themselves.”
“So, you’re saying that my mother should just curl up and die?  And since I’m half thestral, that I should as well?” Starjumper challenged, slowly getting off the couch to stand.
“You are no thestral. You are a Lykan,” he replied simply.  “One of the blessed children of the Night Stone.”
“And I would not be a Lykan if I did not have thestral blood,” he retorted.  “The Night Stone itself was forged from thestral magic by unicorns.  I know how it was made.  I know what it is.  The Night Stone was created by unicorns using the magic of the original thestrals to grant their ability to walk on walls to their unicorn allies, to make it much more easy for the unicorns that sought refuge from the tyranny of Discord to live in the high mountains.  And far more important to me than that, you want to take something from the thestrals that they need to survive, just to right some ancient wrong, and some of those thestrals are my family.  You want me to kill my mother, kill my sister, kill my aunt and uncle and cousins, because a thousand years ago the ancestors of the thestrals were cruel and unjust to your ancestors.  That, your Highness, is evil.  And I will not help you.”
The King gave him a towering look of both anger and scorn.  “You don’t have a choice in the matter,” he declared.  “You will retrieve the Night Stone and bring it back here.  If you do not, you will never see your little Magestrian friend again.”
Starjumper had to struggle to maintain his composure, to not give in to the sudden fury rising up in him and lose himself to the power of the Night Stone. He could feel it, feel it lurking just beyond the edges of his being, ready to flood him with its power if he opened the doorway between them with his emotions.
There was only one thing he could do, else the Night Stone would take him and he might very well die. He had to trust in Summer Dawn and Moonshade.  His horn flared with golden magic, which caused the King to flinch back a little bit and his two guards to surge forward, flanking him and enclosing him a spherical shield, but Starjumper’s spell was not an attack.  The three of them winced and recoiled when his voice became indescribably loud, and he shouted two words that were heard well beyond the boundaries of Crystallon.  “POINT ONE!” Starjumper boomed, his voice shattering the windows behind him.  He then executed his escape plan, enshrouding himself with an aura of golden magic and lifting his hooves off the floor, then he doublecast a teleport spell, vanishing from the room in a circular bust of golden magic.
He reappeared high, high over the city, out of reach of any unicorn spell, and looked down to see if Summer Dawn and Moonshade had heeded his call.  He looked down over the palace compound, his eyes searching feverishly for any flash of pink, and then his heart soared when he saw it, a burst of pink magic in the courtyard far below.  He made out Moonshade flying up and away from the palace, and the glimmer of pink was Summer Dawn, levitating herself and being carried along with her, holding onto her long tail.  He teleported again to get in front of them, but still high, high over the city, and saw that Moonshade was doing what thestrals did when escaping from groundbound opponents, she was climbing as high as possible as fast as possible to get out of range of the unicorns’ magic.  He realized that she didn’t have her armor, and neither did Summer Dawn.  Moonshade saw the burst of magic from his teleport and changed her course to reach him, but he started moving to the west, towards the Nightlands.
She reached him after just a moment, and he put a hoof on her rump and let her pull him along.  “Star!” Summer Dawn said from behind.  “Are you okay?”
“I’m alright,” he replied.  “Where did they take you?”
“To the dungeon,” Moonshade said.  “We woke up in a cell.  I wanted to break out and recover you, but the little slip convinced me that we should just play along until they healed you.  She said they wouldn’t hurt you because they need you, and as long as we stayed in the cell and played along, we’d be safe.”
“She was right,” he said, giving Summer Dawn an appreciative look.  “Well reasoned, Summer.”
“Thanks, Star,” she smiled.  “Did they heal you?”
“I’m healed enough to travel, at least right now,” he replied.  “But we’ll have to land at sunset and deal with my severed wing.  We’ll have to cauterize it,” he said grimly.
Summer Dawn gasped.  “No!  There has to be another way!”
“We don’t have another way,” he replied.  “I’ll bleed out if we don’t seal the wound.  But we’re going to have to land anyway, we have to recover our equipment before we fly out of range of our ability to ‘port it back to us.  We can’t do that up here.”
“Yes we can,” Summer Dawn said.  “You bring it to us, I’ll levitate it so it doesn’t fall.  That shouldn’t strain you too much.”
“Well, that would work.  There was a mirror in the room where they held us, I can use that to scry for our equipment.”
“We’d better do it quick, before those stupid unicorns put it in an antimagic shell or something.”
“Let’s move out a bit further, so we’re not so obvious,” Moonshade said.  “How far away can you do it, Star?”
“Twenty miles, but that’s the edge of my range to use the spell that way.  Ten miles would be better.”
“We can manage ten miles,” she replied, surging forward.  “We’ll land on that cloud right there, it’s about ten miles away,” she said, pointing at a low stratus cloud that had a fairly flat top.  “It’ll also break their line of sight to us, they’ll think we flew over it and kept going.”
“Good idea,” Starjumper agreed.  “Summer, the first thing I’ll recover is your pegasus feather charm, so you can land.”
“Okay.”
It took Moonshade only a moment to reach the cloud.  She flew well past its border to make it look like they were flying on, then she slowed and descended, lightly setting her hooves on its flat top.  Starjumper did the same, and he almost immediately teleported a large, full-length silver mirror that was hanging on the wall in the parlor where they’d been held to them.  He then used it to scry, using an advanced spell that allowed him to see something that belonged to him through the mirror, a less advanced version of the mirror spell he planned to use to get the Night Stone, but still a very useful spell.  It was designed so a magician could find something that he lost by seeing where it was, but Starjumper could use the image in the mirror to teleport the item to them.
The spell located their equipment in about five minutes, which was all being kept in a storeroom under the palace, from the looks of it.  He focused his attention on what he could see in the mirror’s face, then he teleported Summer Dawn’s pegasus feather charm to her first, having it appear pinned in her mane, then she ended her levitation spell and dropped lightly to the cloud.  He then went to work, focusing on every object in the mirror that belonged to them and teleporting it to them, which Summer Dawn caught in her magic before they fell through the cloud.  He managed to get everything they’d managed to bring with them, getting their armor, the packs, what little supplies they had left, their heat stones, and then Summer Dawn had a brilliant idea.  “Star, Mender took the bandages we had on you with him when he left.  Do you think you can find them?  They may let us see into his workshop.  If so, then maybe we can find the potions he intended to use on you to seal your wing and bring them to us.”
He gave her a surprised and bright look.  “Summer, that’s brilliant!” he said honestly.  “Yes, I can find those bandages, they were on me long enough for the spell to consider them mine.”
“If we’re lucky, there’s more healing potions in here we can use.”
It took him nearly ten minutes to find the bandages, but Summer Dawn had been right.  When he changed the view of the mirror, he found the bandages in a waste bin inside a large room filled with bottles, beakers, and vials, clearly the laboratory of a potion maker.  “There’s so many, how do we know what we need?” Summer Dawn asked.
“There,” Starjumper said, changing the view to focus on a rack holding three vials of vibrant red liquid.  “Those are healing elixirs, and very powerful ones.  They must be what Mender was planning to use on me when I changed.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen them before,” he replied.  “Dad made one once, but it took him nearly six months to do it.  He swore to never do it again.  I’m positive.”
“Then you should fetch them.  Maybe we won’t have to burn you, Star,” Summer Dawn suggested.  Seconds later, the three vials and the rack holding them vanished from the mirror and appeared in a circular burst in front of them, to be quickly ensnared in Summer Dawn’s levitation magic so they didn’t fall through the cloud and be lost to them.  Then, just to be safe, he teleported the bandages to them as well, so he left no blood behind they could use in a magical spell to find him or try to control him.
He shook his head.  “We can’t take that chance,” he said.  “We cauterize the wound, then use the elixirs.  If I remember right, they’ll heal the burn along with my other injuries.  If we’re lucky, I could be fully recovered by morning.  But, I won’t be able to shrink,” he warned.  “Elixirs like these, they don’t work right if they’re shrunk down or used on a shrunk pony.  I’ll have to stay at my full size tonight.”
“I can carry your weight, but it will slow me down.  A lot,” Moonshade warned as Summer Dawn placed the elixirs in the pack as Starjumper ended the scrying spell, then allowed the mirror to fall through the cloud.  He was done with it.  “We’ll figure something out.  Maybe the little slip can levitate you for a couple of hours and I can pull you with my tail, like how we got here.  That should let us put a lot of distance from Crystallon, then I can carry you the rest of the night.”
“She’d have to stay unshrunk as well to use her magic like that,” Starjumper told her.  “So she’d have to levitate both of us.”
“I can do it,” Summer Dawn declared strongly.  “I can do it, Star.  We have to get out of Unicornia, get into the Nightlands, and do it fast.  We’re in more danger here than there.  I’ll levitate both of us all night if that’s what it takes.”
“We did bring her for her magic,” Moonshade said with a slight smile and a nod.
“Alright then, Summer, that’s the plan,” he told her, giving her a proud look.  “But I don’t expect you to keep it up all night.  Just keep it up as long as you can, every minute will help.”
“At least we got out of there easy,” Moonshade chuckled.
“Very few unicorns can teleport,” Starjumper said simply.  “They didn’t expect it, and they certainly wouldn’t have expected that both of us can do it.”
“It certainly does change the rules,” Summer Dawn said with a laugh.  “That’s why I wasn’t worried when they put us in that dungeon cell. I knew I could get us out whenever I wanted to.”
“Smart move, Star, not telling them that you can.”
“Never reveal your strengths or your weaknesses to the enemy,” Starjumper said, quoting an old thestral saying.
They hastily geared up, Summer Dawn and Moonshade putting their armor back on, then Summer Dawn packed what supplies they had left in one of the saddlebags off one of the spare pack saddles that they hadn’t lost…and Starjumper was thanking his thorough father for insisting that they pack additional pack saddles in case the one they were using got damaged.  Summer Dawn took a quick inventory of what they had left as she packed it in, telling them what they had, and Starjumper realized that they were going to need more supplies to make it.  They didn’t have enough food left to make it the rest of the way, nor did they have enough waterskins left to carry enough water.  “Moonshade, are there any places we can resupply along your planned route?” he asked after hearing the tally of food and water.
“Water will be easy, there are plenty of streams,” she answered as she watched Summer Dawn levitate the shrunken supplies into the saddlebag.  “Food…I think we can manage.  We’ll pass close to a village where I can probably resupply us, but it’s pretty far into the Nightlands.  There’s…actually, I think I know where we can go for food after we get into the Nightlands,” she said, looking at him.  “But that’s gonna depend on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a small village of Longwing thestrals not far from the border,” she told him.  “They’re pretty standoffish, keep to themselves, but you’re a Longwing.  They don’t know you, but they’ll take one look at your wings—“ she cut herself off and looked away in chagrin.  “They’ll know you’re clan.  Maybe you can talk them into selling us some supplies.  We just have to time it so we arrive just after sunset, when you’re a thestral and before they go to bed for the night.”
“They will know me, at least know of me,” Starjumper said grimly.  “Mother has kept in touch with her family since moving to Equestria, and I don’t doubt that what she writes in her letters has filtered down through the clan.  they know my name, and know I’m a Lykan.”
“But they don’t know Moonstar,” Summer Dawn injected.  “Just use that name, Star.  I doubt Nightsong ever told them about you using a different name when you’re a thestral.”
“We don’t have many other options, Star,” Moonshade told him.  “There aren’t any other villages even close to the route I picked.  I chose it because of that, so we could avoid other thestrals as much as possible.  And unless you want to eat cliff rats and mountain rabbits along the way, we don’t have many options.”
Summer Dawn shuddered and audibly gagged.
“Well, we can always try. And if they won’t sell it to us, we can always steal it,” he said simply.
“Now you’re thinking like a thestral soldier,” Moonshade said with a smile and an approving nod.  “Now let’s get moving so we put as much distance between us and Crystallon as possible before sunset.”
“That means we shrink,” Starjumper declared.  “Land around ten minutes before sunset, Moonshade.”
She nodded.
“I’ll do it, you need to save your strength, Star,” Summer Dawn said, stepping up to him.
Once they were shrunk down, in the satchel, and on the way, Summer Dawn laid down beside him as he rested near the heatstone mounted into the bottom of the pack, enjoying its warmth, and nuzzled his neck gently.  She told him about how they’d woke up in the dungeon, no doubt affected by a sleep spell to keep them from waking up as they were moved, and how she’d had to talk Moonshade into not going to war with the entire city, to just sit tight and let the unicorns heal him and then escape. Starjumper was mightily impressed both by her wise reasoning in seeing the truth of the situation, and her patience in smartly just staying put and letting the unicorns help him because she knew they needed him.  Truly, she had managed the situation with poise, intelligence, and wisdom, and he was so proud of her that he could barely contain himself.
It seemed that they’d barely talked a minute before they felt Moonshade land, and a glance through the mesh showed him that it was nearly sunset.  The flap opened and Summer Dawn levitated them out and returned them to normal size, and he saw that she had again landed on a cloud, a flat spot on the edge of a cumulous cloud which made it seem like they’d landed at the base of a white cliff, and she’d smartly gone around to the far side of it, the west side, which gave them a view of the sun as it approached the peaks of the Nightlands, not far away now.  Starjumper took a deep, cleansing breath and settled down on his belly on the cloud, pulling a metal cooking pan out of the pack and returning it to its normal size.  He then used a spell to heat up the metal, maintaining it on the pan for minute after minute as the two mares looked on silently, until it started to glow a faint, ruddy red from the heat.
“You’ve done this before, Moonshade?” Starjumper asked in a focused voice.
“No, but I’m familiar with the process,” she replied, stepping towards him.  “I’ll do it, little slip.  The handle should be cool enough for me to cling to it.”  She reached out a tentative hoof and put it on the wooden handle of the pot, which was starting to blacken around the base from the heat, then clung to it and nodded confidently.  “Little slip, when he changes, you use your magic to hold him down,” she ordered.  “He’s gonna jump when I do this.”
“Alright,” she said in a tremulous voice, her eyes shimmering with compassion and fear.
“Just another moment,” Starjumper said, looking towards the setting sun.  “Everypony get ready.”
It was even less time than that.  As soon as the sun sank below the peaks to the west, Starjumper felt the light of the moon rising behind the cloud go through him, and that triggered the change.  His horn turned to ash and crumbled away from his forehead, and he felt—it was unlike anything he’d felt before, for obvious reasons.  He felt his left wing tear free from his back and grow out to its full size in the span of three heartbeats, but his right wing, the lost wing, he felt...he felt only pain.  He felt what was left of the wing erupt from his back, but then nothing, just the pain of the wound where his wing had been severed, which began bleeding profusely as soon as it formed.
“Hold him down!” Moonshade barked, and she advanced with the pan.  He closed his eyes and looked away, and then he felt her apply it, felt the searing agony of the red hot metal burning his wounded, tortured flesh.  He screamed in pain and flinched violently, unable to move much at all because of Summer Dawn’s levitation magic laid over him like a restraining blanket.  The smell of boiling blood and burning flesh filled his now-sensitive nose as Moonshade made sure to keep the pan applied long enough to stop the bleeding, then she pulled it away with a sharp jerk, because the burned flesh was sticking to the metal.  That made him scream again, then he collapsed onto the cloud, panting from the ordeal as the two mares inspected their work.  “The bleeding stopped,” Moonshade declared.  “How do we apply the elixir, little slip?”
“It’s a potion, he has to drink it,” she answered.
“Then let’s get them in his belly.”
“Just one,” he panted, not moving.  “I can’t drink all three at once, only one can affect me at a time.  We’d be wasting the other two.  I drink one every four hours, that way they do their work through the night.”
“You sure?”
“My father made one of them once, I remember how they work,” he answered as he felt Summer Dawn release her magical hold on him.  He still didn’t move, feeling his back and shoulders shiver from the residual pain.  “How…how much is left?” he asked hesitantly.
“Not much,” Moonshade replied gruffly.  “The wing was severed almost flush against your back, and the wound across your shoulders runs just above it.  It missed your other wing by a whisker, the slash goes right across the base of your other wing.  What’s left is barely three inches long.  You…you may have to have what’s left removed, Star,” she warned him in a tight voice.  “Usually a wound like this, it’s best to completely remove the remainder so it doesn’t snag on things.”
“That…I suppose that’s for the best,” he said stoically.  “Let’s bandage it up and get moving.”
“Drink this first, Star,” Summer Dawn said in an emotional voice, a vial holding the elixir floating in front of him.  He did so, not enjoying the bitter taste, but the pain started to fade with a warm sensation that radiated from his stomach as soon as the elixir reached it.
He held still as Summer Dawn wrapped the last bandage they had around his shoulders, half of its windings going under his front legs and the other half around his neck, and he felt both a jag of pain and a sudden feeling of loss when he almost reflexively opened his wings, feeling the pain in his back from trying to move a wing that was no longer there using muscles that had been sliced through and feeling a sudden surge of emptiness wash through him.  It was easy to ignore, compartmentalize what had happened when he was a unicorn, but now, facing his loss directly, it hit him like a mountain.  When he tried to raise his wings, he felt the cold winter air against only one of them.  The other one, it was like…like…like it was numb and weightless.  It didn’t feel like it wasn’t there anymore, he didn’t feel an absence. And with the pain subdued by the elixir affecting him, he just felt…nothing.
Nothing.
He would never fly again.  He’d known it in his head after it happened, but now he knew it in his heart.  In his soul.  He would never fly again.  He had lost one of the few things in his life that had brought him joy, peace, a feeling of freedom from his worries and his many duties.  But it was gone now, taken from him in the flash of a metal blade and the span of a heartbeat in time.  And he had never even had the chance to enjoy it one final time.
As Summer Dawn tied a rope around his middle, tied the other end around her middle, and then tied a second rope to the center of it and had Moonshade cling to the other end of it with her tail to allow her to pull them along, he felt the most profound sense of loss as she levitated them up off the cloud.  He couldn’t do that for himself anymore, at least not at night.  Just last night, he could have easily hovered in place using his own wings, pulled Summer Dawn along on his own.  Now, he had to rely on Summer Dawn to get him off the cloud, get him into the air, and it made him feel crippled.  Like he was no longer a whole pony.
Summer Dawn gave him a look filled with emotion, as she seemed to sense what was going through his mind as Moonshade took off and pulled them behind her, quickly gaining speed as she ascended even more to get them on line with the high mountains ahead of them.  She put a hoof on his shoulder, her eyes shimmering and full of unshed tears.  He said nothing, just lowered his eyes and looked down at the ground far below when they passed over the cloud, seeing a village’s magical lights in a shallow, wide river valley in the foothills of the mountains that formed the Nightlands.
But even that was painful.  He closed his eyes, refused to look, because he knew that it was no longer a sight that he would be able to see on his own.  From this moment on, for the rest of his life, he would never be this high again unless some other pony carried him.
The joy of it, the freedom, gone.
All the years of work, of practice to master his skills, wasted.
The remaining wing on his back seemed heavy to him now, and he knew that it would forever be a reminder of what he had lost.  It would be a burden to him now, a curse, and every time he looked in the mirror and saw what was there and what was missing, he would know that the loss of the symmetry of his reflection was also the loss of the symmetry of his life.
Unicorn by day, thestral by night…but no longer a whole thestral.  He no longer felt like a thestral.  Now, he was a unicorn that lost his horn at night and carried the burden of a single wing that would forever remind him that he was no longer the same pony.
He knew he’d eventually feel better.  The loss was too new, too raw, and he had every right to feel sorry for himself, to mourn what he had lost, at least a little bit, at least tonight.  But he couldn’t let that interfere with their mission.  If he failed, if they failed, it might plunge the entire world into war.  The loss of his wing was insignificant compared to that, to the feeling of crushing humiliation and responsibility and despair if he failed, if he allowed the Night Queen to resurrect Sombra.  If that happened, all the misery that came after, all the pain, all the loss, it would be his fault.  His responsibility.  It would make how he felt right now feel like a gallop through a field of wildflowers by comparison.
He would give himself tonight to wallow in his misery.  But when the sun rose, when the crippled thestral was replaced by the unicorn, then it would be time to put his selfishness away and think about more than just himself.
But…he couldn’t let himself feel too sorry for himself, else the Night Stone might seize the opportunity as he succumbed to powerful emotion and reconnect to him.  And that might be catastrophic, because it very well might kill him.
But in a way, he now felt like a kindred spirit to it.  Now he knew what it was like to have a hole bored through his life, through his soul, to feel the pain and the despair of losing something precious to him.  Long ago, the Night Stone had lost the Lykans that had spoken to it, and had suffered for centuries in isolated, terrible loneliness and loss.  Perhaps…he and the Night Stone could console one another when he retrieved it.
Only time would tell.
But, there was one thing in all this that he couldn’t ignore or deny.  He had lost, but he had also gained, and all he had to do to be reminded of that was to look at Summer Dawn.  She was standing by him even more fiercely that before because of his lost wing, displaying the loyalty and love that he had always hoped to find in a mare.  She didn’t care that he was a Lykan, and now she didn’t care that he had been disfigured.  She understood better than any pony or creature that couldn’t fly just what he had lost, how integral flying had been in his life, and she was doing everything she could to console him and support him.
If anything, being sentenced to spend the rest of his life on the ground meant that he would be closer to her…and that made this bearable.




It was a long night for all of them.
For Moonshade, it was a long night of hard flying after barely getting any rest the day before.  She had put on as much speed as she could manage the entire night, both getting as much distance between them and Crystallon as possible—the King could teleport, that made him a viable threat if he decided to chase them down himself—and to get them to the Nightlands as fast as she could.  They absolutely had to reach the Nightlands and find a place to hole up for the day, because a unicorn with fangs and thestral eyes was a dead giveaway for a Lykan, so he could not be seen by any thestral while the sun was up.  For Starjumper, it was a long night dealing with both his loss and his healing injury, which was healing at a vastly accelerated rate thanks to the elixirs he drank every four hours throughout the night.  Each one initially flushed him with warm, painless serenity, then that feeling slowly wore off and a dull pain and itching set into the wounds as they healed.  But, the effect was unmistakable and impressive, for the deep slash across his shoulders almost completely closed over the night, and the charred burn of the cauterized stump of his wing healed over with natural skin and fur.  The pain of the wound slowly ebbed over the night, and by the time they crossed over into the Nightlands about an hour before dawn, he was almost completely healed.  He only had a faint ache in his shoulders and he could feel a twinge of pain if he moved his forelegs or remaining wing the wrong way.  For Summer Dawn, the night was a major test of her magical endurance, as she kept both herself and Starjumper levitated for hour after hour through the night.  She was a powerful magician, but using that much magic for that long was something that not even Princess Celestia could pull off easily.  She was starting to visibly tire by midnight, and she talked less and less as the effort started to wear her down.  By the time they crossed into the Nightlands, she was breathing heavily and her face was drawn, drained.  She wasn’t going to last much longer.
That was what spurred him to have Moonshade land.  Summer Dawn had to rest or she was going to pass out, and Moonshade could do with a break as well.  Summer Dawn’s magic did finally give out just as Moonshade set hoof on a wide, rocky ledge on a steep mountainside, a place nopony could reach unless they could fly or walk on walls.  Summer Dawn immediately flopped onto her belly on the rock, trying to catch her breath, and Starjumper patted her on the shoulder with his hoof.  “Well done, Summer.  Just rest a while,” he said gently.
But his words fell on deaf ears, because she was already asleep.  Having to levitate them all night had utterly exhausted her.  He brushed her mane out of her face lovingly, then turned and looked to Moonshade, who was gnawing on a piece of honeyed spice bread.  “The Nightlands,” Starjumper said, looking down into a deep, steep valley.  “I never thought I’d see this place.  We need to find a place to hole up for the day.”
“There are caves all over the place in this part of the range,” she told him.  “There’s five on the other side of the valley,” she added, pointing with her hoof.
“How far are we from the Longwing village?”
“It’s at the end of the valley,” she replied, moving her hoof to point deeper into the Nightlands.  “This valley opens into Unicornia, and there’s a road that merchants use to get to the village.  Down there,” she pointed, and he could see the narrow road at the bottom of the valley, built alongside a shallow, fast-flowing river.  The floor of the valley had winter-browned scrub brush and tough grasses growing in the rocky soil on either side of the river, as well as a few small, stout pine and aspen trees.  “We have a choice, Star.  We have an hour before dawn, we could go on to the village and try to get some supplies, or we can camp for the day and try just after sunset.”
“It’s best to wait until after sunset,” he replied.  “Besides, Summer Dawn is completely wiped out.  I don’t think we could wake her up short of dropping her into the river.”
“She’s a tough little thing,” Moonshade said approvingly.  “Brave, too.  You’ve got yourself a fine mare, Starjumper.  Don’t blow it.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Have your wounds healed?”
“Almost,” he answered.  “I think that by tonight, I’ll be completely healed.”
“I’ll go find a suitable cave.  You keep an eye on the little slip,” she said, stepping away from him and opening her wings.
He went back to Summer Dawn and sat down beside her, then brushed her long pink mane away from her eyes gently with a hoof, smiling down at her. She’d really come through like a champion, both doing her part in getting back their gear and carrying him for very nearly the entire night, working herself past exhaustion.  She really was something special, and he felt both honored and humbled that a mare as amazing as she was had any interest in a stallion like him.
Especially now.
He was so glad she was here.  He wasn’t sure he’d be able to do this without her, have to face losing his wing alone.  With her help, her support, he knew he could push though this and they could finish their task.  After all, in a way, he was doing this for her as much as for Equestria.  He wanted to keep her safe, keep the world in which she lived safe, and that meant going off on this dangerous adventure to stop Sombra from being resurrected.
She really was so beautiful.
He settled on his belly beside her, waiting for Moonshade to return, content to watch over the mare he loved as she slept, to keep her safe, and draw strength from her presence.  When this was all over, he was going to do what she wanted. He was going to stay in Canterlot, in his hidden cave on the side of the cliff, so he could be close to her as she embarked on her quest to learn everything she could about magic.  He would guide her down that path as long as he could, teach her everything he knew, and when he reached the end of that road, he would gladly follow down the road that she forged beyond it.  Eventually, he would become her student, and when that happened, he would be as happy to learn from her as she seemed to enjoy learning from him.  They would walk that path together, him to the extent of his ability, and then he would watch her go far beyond him, watch her bloom and flourish, grow into one of the most powerful unicorn magicians Equestria had ever seen.
And he would be so, so proud of her.
Magic…it was all he had left, now.  Without his wing, unable to fly, all that was left in his life that interested him was magic.  Maybe…maybe if he studied enough, he might find a way to restore his wing.  Mender had said that it was beyond his ability to restore his wing…maybe that meant that for some other pony, maybe it wouldn’t be beyond their ability.  He wasn’t as powerful in magic as Summer Dawn, but he was a good magician.  Maybe, maybe he could find a spell, find a recipe for a potion, that did have that kind of restorative power.  He certainly couldn’t count on it, couldn’t allow himself to become convinced that magic could restore his wing and thus become obsessed with the idea, but it was worth investigation.
If he could find magic to restore his wing, he’d be overjoyed.  But he always had to keep in mind and be ready to accept the fact that he might not.  He had to be able to accept this new reality in his life, else his desire to regain what he lost ruin what life he had left.  He could hope to find a way to restore his wing, but be ready to accept reality if that search came up empty.
But the idea of it did give him hope, and right now, with the pain of the loss still a wound in his soul, it made him feel a little better.
Either way, whether he restored his wing or not, he knew that without Summer Dawn, his life would be completely empty.
Moonshade returned a moment later.  “I found a good one, the only down side is it's at the bottom of the valley, so that means that non-flyers can get into it.  All we have to do is fortify or hide the entrance.  It has a small stream running through it, so we’ll have access to water without coming out,” she told him.  “You carry her, I’ll carry you.”
“Alright,” he said.  He put his hooves on Summer Dawn’s armor and clung to it, allowing Moonshade to pick them both up by his saddlepack—he still wasn’t wearing his armor—felt the straps pull taut against his belly   She flew them about a mile up the valley towards the village, then landed at a very narrow entrance at the base of a rocky slope that had a small stream flowing out of it.  That stream meandered down the scrubby bottom of the valley and joined the main stream that flowed down the center of it.  He put Summer Dawn on his back and carried her inside, having to walk through the icy cold water and then cling to the side of the wall to get up a steep rocky incline, and found a small chamber that opened up at the top of it, roughly elliptical in shape and with a fairly flat floor, flat enough to give him someplace to gently lay Summer Dawn down.  He pulled out her bedroll and placed her into it, then pulled her blanket up over her.  He then stepped over and took a long drink from a shallow pool formed before the stream tumbled down the steep incline, not quite a waterfall, as Moonshade squirmed out of the pack saddle and set it aside, then started taking of her armor.  “We should be safe enough here, but we’ll still need to post a guard,” she said.  I'll take the morning, you take the evening if the little slip hasn't recovered by then.”
“I have to stay up until after sunrise anyway, so you get some sleep,” he said.  “When I get my magic back, I’ll make sure nopony can get in here before I get some rest.”
She gave him a long look, then nodded.   “Alright.  I’ll try to wake up as early as I can to keep watch.”
“Don’t bother.  We’re all going to need as much rest as we can get with what’s coming.  Just sleep, Moonshade.  I promise you, nopony’s getting in here after I’m done.  I’m going to narrow the entrance to the point where no pony can get in, on top of a few other spells I can cast that will last all day.”
“Alright.”  She stepped over to the wall of the cavern and walked up it, then across the ceiling, until she was at the highest point in the elliptical chamber.  She then hung herself from the ceiling by her tail and wrapped her wings around herself and closed her eyes.  And within seconds, she too was asleep, betraying just how tired she was.
Taking a deep breath, Starjumper walked up to the edge of the pool, looking down the jagged, steep sloped with deep cuts eroded into it from the water flowing down it, then sat down and kept watch on the narrow passage at the bottom, the only way into the cave.  Though he was alone with his thoughts, he was too tired to do much of anything, even feel sorry for himself.  He was so tired that he had to fight to stay awake to await the sunrise.  He nodded off so many times that he was honestly taken by surprise when the sunrise came, when the sunlight seemed to pierce through the rock and sear into his soul, triggering the change.  The lone wing on his back turned to ash and crumbled, and then his horn tore through the skin and flesh of his forehead and twisted upon itself as it grew with magical speed, until it reached its full size.  He wiped at a bit of blood that flowed down the side of his muzzle, then his horn flared with golden light, illuminating the chamber, as he set to work.  He put up a charged shield at the top of the incline to keep ponies out, then he went down to the entrance and used the stone shaping spell to close the entrance to the point where only a small animal was going to get in, having to leave it open both so air could get in and so the water didn’t get dammed up.  Once that was done, he returned to the chamber and set out his own bedroll, laying it beside Summer Dawn’s, and he climbed into it.
He was asleep almost the instant his head hit the rolled-up blanket that served as his pillow.